Pre-service teachers’ international study experiences or in-service teachers’ professional learning communities: what comes into play in Finnish teachers’ self-efficacy in multicultural classrooms?

ABSTRACT

Across many countries, schools and classrooms are becoming culturally diverse. In response to this global trend, culturally responsive teaching (CRT) has been highlighted. Within this context, we have a two-fold goal in this study; to explore 1) whether and how pre-service teachers’ international study experiences can impact their self-efficacy in multicultural classrooms when becoming practicing teachers and 2) whether and how in-service teachers’ engagements in professional learning communities (PLC)can improve their self-efficacy in multicultural classrooms. Drawing on 2,714 Finnish teachers from 139 schoolsinthe Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018, we found a positive relationship between teachers’ study abroad experiences during their pre-service teacher education and their self-efficacy in multicultural classrooms. However, this significant result is not maintained with the addition of important variables.In contradistinction with this vanishing effect of teachers’ study abroad experiences, we found that teachers’ engagements in PLCs play a significant role in their self-efficacy in multicultural classrooms. We discuss implications of the contrasting findings for research and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• International study experiences
• professional learning communities
• self-efficacy in multicultural classrooms
• culturally responsive teaching
• Finland

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A3A2065967).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Across different countries and societies, the ISCED 2 level schools are differently referred to (e.g., junior secondary, middle school, junior high school).

2. We used expectation maximisation (EM) estimation for the school-level data, given that the HLM software program used in this study can accommodate a single dataset for upper-levels whereas we used multiply imputed datasets for the level-1 (i.e., teacher-level in our study) in the HLM software program.

3. In addition, to take into account sampling error in estimated group effects, the manifest-latentapproach was applied (Marsh et al, 2009). That is, PLCs and teachers’ study abroad experience were observed at the teacher-level. In the HLM analysis, the aggregate values of these two independent variables were used at school level for considering contextual effects (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002, pp.139–140). However, since this approach might produce biased estimates of the school contextual effects, we intended to address the potential bias by applying the manifest-latentapproach that considers sampling error when estimating contextual effects (Hofmann, 1997; Lüdtke et al., 2008).

4. The cut-off value of model fit indices in our study met conventional criteria suggested by Hu &Bentler (1999) whereas our between-level SRMR did not. This is because the sample size of level 2 units are smaller than 200. Asparouhov and Muthén (2018) suggest that the 0.08 cut-off value for SRMR may be too rigid for between-level SRMR given that it is not uncommon to have samples with fewer than 200 units for between-level analysis. This explains why there are many published studies that report between-level SRMR greater than 0.08 (Kim et al., 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Youngmin Mo

Youngmin Mo is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Educational Research, Yonsei University, South Korea. He received a PhD degree in education from Yonsei University in 2021. His research interests include analysis of educational policy, equity in education, and achievement gap.

Margie Appel

Margie Appel is currently working as a lecturer in Teacher Education at the University of Canberra. She has worked for many years as a teacher in Australia, Denmark, Japan and a remote indigenous community in the NT. Margie is in the final stages of her doctorate on culturally responsive teaching. Research interests include teacher education, culturally responsive teaching, intercultural competence, teacher professionalism.

Jin Won Kim

Jin Won Kim is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Educational Research, Yonsei University, South Korea. Her research focuses on educational policy, educational leadership, teacher leadership, teacher professional development, and professional learning community.

Moosung Lee

Moosung Lee is a Centenary Professor at the University of Canberra in Australia. He is also affiliated at Yonsei University in South Korea. He has published extensively in the areas of educational leadership & administration and comparative education (more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and 30 book chapters). He received the AERA’s Emerging Scholar Award (Division A) and currently serves as Senior Associate Editor ofJournal of Educational Administration.